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No. 6||,25l. Patented Sept. 27, |898, W. H. HERHULD.

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WILLIAM II. HERI'IOLD, OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, ASSIGNOR TO F. HERIIOLD da SONS, OF SAME PLACE.

CHAIR.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent 1\;r` .'611,2.'-' 1,l dated september 27,1898.

Application filed January 3l, 1898. Serial No. 6683621.` (No model.)

To all whom t may concern.-

Be it known that I, WILLIAM H. I-IERHOLD, a citizen of the United States,residing at Chicago, in the county of Cook and State of Illinois, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Chairs; and I do declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, and to the letters of reference marked thereon,which form a part of this specification.

This invention relates to solid bottoms for chairs as distinguished from bottoms comprising a frame into which is fitted a seat portion. Its object is to secure durabilityV by preventing the opening of the joints between the several pieces of which the bottom is composed, and this object is attained by making the chair-bottom of a plurality of layers, preferably two, glued together, the several layers being composed of a plurality of pieces glued together, the pieces being so assorted and arranged that the joints between the pieces of one layer are intermediate of the joints between the pieces of the adjacent layer.

It has been customary in chair construction to make solid bottoms of a single thickness; but usually it is impracticable to secure stock of sufficient width to avoid jointing. The grain runs from front to back, and there are usually one or more joints in the same direction. The tendency to shrinkage is increased by the fact that such bottoms are usually quite thick, and as a result it is eX- vceedingly difficult to prevent the opening of the joints, and it is common to find chairs of this style which have been in use for a few months with the joint or joints entirely separated, so that the several sections are relatively movable. The only effort known to me to have been made to overcome this difficulty is by the use of dowel-pins or transverse strips gained into the solid bottom, dependence being placed upon the`use of material so disposed that its grain is transverse to the grain of the pieces to be secured together. Experience has shown that these methods are inadequate; but I have found that the conthe joints by which the pieces or sections of structionforming the subject of this application wholly overcomes the difficulty, and after a severe test the bottoms are found to be as solid as when first made.

Y In the accompanying drawings, Figure lis a plan view of a chair, a portion of the bottom being broken out. Fig. 2 is a sectional view of the bottom on the line 2 2 of Fig. 1, and Fig. 3 is a sectional view of the bottom on the line 3 3 of Fig. l.

My improved chair-bottom is composed of a plurality of (preferably two) layers, designated by the characters A B, these layers having their contacting faces carefully dressed and secured together by cement, such as glue. Each of the layers A B is composed of a plurality of pieces, as shown, three in number, those of the upper layer being designated@ el e and those of the lower layer be ing designated f g h. The several pieces or sections of each layer are glued together, and in making up the two layers the pieces of which they are composed are so selected that I5 one layer are united fail to coincide with the joints uniting the pieces or sections of which the adjacent layer is composed. The several sections of each layer are so placed that the grain is longitudinal as to the chair-bottomthat is to say, running from front to rearso that the grain is parallel throughout the entire chair-bottom.

The opening of the joints between the sections of which a chair-bottom is composed is due to the shrinkage of the material, assuming that a good cement or glue is used, the contacting faces of adjacentv pieces being drawn apart by the contractionof such pieces. This difliculty is avoided by the construction described by utilizing the contracting tendency of one piece to counteract that of another. For example, the opening of the joint at the juncture of the pieces c cl would be due to the shrinkage of these two pieces. The tendency of the piece f to shrink is quite as pronounced as that of the'piece d; but inasmuch as these two pieces overlap and are securely cemented together it is obvious that the tendency of the piece d to contract is counteracted by the similar tendency of the part f. If the joint uniting the pieces c d IOO was not reinforced, the shrinkage would be resisted only by the glue used in making it. The construction shown, however, supplements the joint by a much larger area of glued surface, due to the overlapping of the parts d f, and, furthermore, the joint uniting the two parts last named can be broken only by the creeping of the one piece upon the other, while the joint between the parts c d must resist onlya direct pull. By arranging the grain parallel a much stronger joint is made between the layers than if they were crossed, for the reason that in the latter case the contraction would be in transverse directions and would tend to rupture the joint WILLIAM II. IIERIIOLD.

Witnesses:

BESTER B. BAIRD, LOUIS K. GILLsoN. 

